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WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

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Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#121

Post by tscs37 »

icebraining wrote: post #116
tscs37 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In germany there is an imprint requirement so you'll always have a contact point for these things. Unlike WHOIS it's on a website so you can protect this information much more easily from scraping and spamming.

Not all domains have public websites.

If those create any abuse then you can still contact the registrar.

From what I understand the eventual plan for WHOIS to only allow access if there is truly legitimate interest. Everything else can be filtered over the registrar.

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#122

Post by anfogoat »

zaarn wrote: post #110
MR4D wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, we have different sites where you can look up patent information. In fact, IBM and Microsoft run this one, which is a global database. Article: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-ibm-arm-back-open-pa... Site: http://oropo.net/ So my question, is if Whois had to take their site offline due to GDPR, then will things like this go offline? My concern is that GDPR will have a chilling effect not just on fr…

WHOIS will not be permanently offline, it will be temporarily offline while the ICANN and others work out how to give access to people who have legitimate interest in the data, ie people looking for a legal contact, sysadmins looking to notify someone, registrars themselves, etc. I don't think the US patent database will go offline, the EU one might hide personal information like name and address unless you request a…

> how to give access to people who have legitimate interest in the data, ie people looking for a legal contact, sysadmins looking to notify someone, registrars themselves, etc.

That is, anyone but the public. Oh, EU, you've done it again.

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#123

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

rubicon33 wrote: post #56
jedberg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you buy a house, your name and the purchase price are public information. Any one at any time can look up who owns a house, how much they paid for it, and how much they pay in property tax every year. I get a ton of spam because of this. However, I'd rather have this system than one in which all the owners are secret. I've had to look up owner information before to contact owners of various properties, and havin…

> When you buy a house, your name and the purchase price are public information. Any one at any time can look up who owns a house, how much they paid for it, and how much they pay in property tax every year. Uh, really? Where?

I know that this is all managed by a government department called the "Land Registry" in the UK.

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#124

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

robalfonso wrote: post #4

In the short term WHOIS is going to be limited to just the registrant organization, state, country and a masked email address (Admin and Technical fields will be removed save email). This is short term to come into compliance with GDPR. Long term ICANN intends to create a privileged group (other registrars, law enforcement, etc) Who will be able to get to the full whois data. So a sort of tiered system. Expect this t…

> Expect this to take a minimum of a year.

GDPR was announced over 2 years ago, why are they only just starting now?

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#125

Post by icebraining »

MR4D wrote: post #83

This is stupid. What happens next - do patents and copyrights have owner’s right to be forgotten? If so, then who do you sue for stealing your copyright? The intent is good - let me be clear about that. But the implementation is having second order affects that are going to f * with things in a big way because it wasn’t thought through as thoroughly as it should have been. * * Key thought here is that it might be ext…

If so, then who do you sue for stealing your copyright?

I don't even understand the question. Why would anyone "stealing" your copyright or patent register themselves in those databases? The purpose of those databases is to let the legitimate inventor/author inform everyone else that they "own" the thing, not to catch infringers.

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#126

Post by Moter8 »

dingaling wrote: post #112
jacekm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how people responsible for .pl (Poland) domain handle this. First of all, they list only very basic data, with no names, addresses, etc. when you query their whois. To see the full data, you have to go to their website and type the captcha, which filters out at least some of the bots. But even there they display the data if it belongs to a company, they won't show any details if it's registered to a private pe…

> you have to go to their website and type the captcha I'd prefer that they'd charge me 5 eurocents per query rather than using my time and effort to feed Google's AI.

Not sure why you are saying this, when the site uses a "usual" captcha (that can probably be solved easily, but that's another thing): https://www.dns.pl/cgi-bin/en_whois.pl

See also https://www.denic.de/webwhois-web20/ for the .de registry's captcha.

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#127

Post by dx034 »

JeanMarcS wrote: post #95
slrz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choose a registrar that doesn't charge you extra? Your name stays in, of course, but your (electronic and snail) mail addresses and phone number can be replaced by registrar-managed ones where they forward you incoming stuff and (mostly) keep the spam. It's a pretty common thing with European providers, I think.

Another example is OVH with its owo option which obfuscate Whois datas for years.

OVH is weird, they quite often don't obfuscate all contact data. I switched to namecheap for some and they don't leave any of your original data in there.

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#128

Post by dx034 »

tscs37 wrote: post #99
jedberg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I used to work in security, I used Whois every day. In many cases it was to notify a domain owner that their domain had been compromised and was being used for spam. I also used it a lot to track down bad actors because most of them are dumb and don’t hide their Whois.

In germany there is an imprint requirement so you'll always have a contact point for these things. Unlike WHOIS it's on a website so you can protect this information much more easily from scraping and spamming.

That's where WHOIS protection comes in handy. If you don't want to get even more spam (the imprint has to be clear text, no obfuscation so gets spammed a lot) but a website that could target Germans (or you're in Germany), you'll quickly get costly letters from specialised lawyers. Having Whois protection usually helps, they tend to give up if they can't get your address easily.

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#129

Post by dx034 »

cm2187 wrote: post #16
kbar13 wrote: post #2

domain registration data is in a weird place for the modern internet. I can see the value of having a real registry when it was first developed, but now it seems like a pretty easy way for people to shoot themselves in the foot with regards to privacy. Also, some registrars charge a premium for WHOIS privacy. It should not cost extra to have your legal name and address to be hidden from the entirety of the internet.

And some jokers like OVH do not charge anything for privacy but fuck it up. I got recently hundreds of emails and a dozen phone calls from various spammers as a result of registering some domain names with them despite chosing the privacy options. The publication of personal information on whois cannot stop soon enough.

Yep, they only replace owner but not contact details for admin or tech. That way your details are as public as without their "service".

Re: WHOIS blackout period likely starting in May

#130

Post by dx034 »

jacekm wrote: post #26
mort96 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any registrars not charge a premium for Whois privacy? I know Hover doesn't have a separate Whois privacy entry price, but the base price at Hover seems to be about the price of a domain + Whois privacy at other registrars.

I have some domains in OVH, they do not charge for privacy. Generally you can check out https://tld-list.com/tld/com for the list of providers which offer free whois privacy for a given domain.

Be careful with OVH, they put your details in Admin-C/Tech-C, same effect as not using their service at all. At least that was my experience a few months back, I then switched to namecheap to avoid that.
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